Moon Chaser 2

Moon Chaser Haiku
Originally uploaded by Zanalee

A loneliness
A mystery
An evasiveness
to all who seek,
to hold it still
or bend it's will,
To find the prints
of it's silvery feet.
They trail you closely,
and then run away.
You long for words.
But what is left to say?

Fido-Fidelis-Fidelity

 The media hasn't changed very much since the 1440s in it's use of dogs to portray stability and trustworthiness. But I had no idea how directly Europeans had linked the symbolism of dogs to God and piousness and purity. I've heard the term "Fido" used for dogs all my life and never learned until yesterday in my Intro to Visual Arts Class that it is derived from the Latin, Fidelis which the word Fidelity is derived from. Essentially Fido means "I trust." Fucking fascinating. Symbolism in religious painting is a fucking trip.
The Catholic faith was as big a myth making factory as the Greeks were. They were the original Ad Men for their version of "God."

That being said, I happen to think that a great deal of it was as brilliant as it was problematic. That's another really long blog.

"The Philosophical Baby"

Psychologist Gopnik (The Scientist in the Crib) points out that babies have long been excluded from the philosophical literature, and in this absorbing text, she argues that if anything, babies are more conscious than grownups. While adults often function on autopilot, getting through their busy days as functional zombies, babies, with their malleable, complex minds and penchant for discovery, approach life like little travelers, enthralled by every nuance of their exciting and novel environment. Gopnik compares babies to the research and development department of the human species, while adults take care of production and marketing. Like little scientists, babies draw accurate conclusions from data and statistical analysis, conduct clever experiments and figure out everything from how to get mom to smile at them to how to make a hanging mobile spin. Like adults, the author claims, babies are even capable of counterfactual thinking (the ability to imagine different outcomes that might happen in the future or might have happened in the past). As she tackles philosophical questions regarding love, truth and the meaning of life, Gopnik reveals that babies and children are keys not only to how the mind works but also to our understanding of the human condition and the nature of love. 

Finally, a book I've always wanted to read.

I think it was on GMA yesterday morning where they were doing a story which essentially studied the predominance of parents introducing several versions of formal education such as "Baby Einstein" to their babies in a way that Dr Gopnik, a psychologist, feels is a bit heavy handed in America today. She claims that babies are already smarter than you think and need to be left more to their own developmental and discovering devices. I loved it! I have always felt this way about babies. I think so much gets lost in adulthood that babies seem to have total access to and it's a shame when adults feel like they cannot "play" anymore. A shame, but understandable. But why take all the fun of being a baby away by ramming lessons down their throats before they have a chance to "learn" in their own unique way? Babies were built to learn, designed to imitate and want to know more. That's what they do if they are developing in a healthy way, in a healthy environment.

Many Dr. Allison Gopnik's observation on "The Philosophical Baby"  are the things I most look forward to when I think of having a baby. Not today though. Everybody calm down. But one day soon, I can't wait to sit down with my babie(s) and have a business meeting with some blocks or some leaves or a blanket and a teething ring and take notes. Because I think babies have a lot to teach us. I have watched babies on the train, in the park and in the homes of friends and family and I have learned a great deal that makes me smile, the kind of smile that feeds my heart.

Of course I've had some horrible experiences with babies as well. Babies are just people after all. But somewhere between birth and programming/education they're a little bit more than just human. Adults by and large, lose that superhuman quality over time sadly. And if they don't, they are usually not considered to be functioning adults. Only artists, actors, and a handful of our societies' accepted "geniuses" are allowed to play for a lifetime without being labeled by as unstable, freakish or just plain crazy. And that's what many "functioning adults" are anyway to the detriment of society.

But it's that period of infancy in the human life span where we are often allowed to be "crazy" and "freakish" without being beaten (if we're lucky) and shut away that has always fascinated me. Therein lies a certain freedom, if we are given that space, to be who we are and not care what anyone thinks, a freedom we may never experience again i n life although we claim to spend our adult lives struggling for it.

Album Covers of my Youth

A great deal of my childhood was spent listening to the music my parents played as my brother and I were growing up. My dad is a big music lover and had an enormous album collection. He even owned one of those huge portable audio reel to reel tape recorders which he purchased when he was in Vietnam. He's always been into the advancing technology of sound. Me, I just loved music. I never cared how the recording sounded. I just wanted to hear it. If it weren't for my dad, I may not have graduated from listening to cassette tapes as quickly as I did. I was still listening to my tapes long after they'd been phased out by CDS which I finally conceded to but found to be less romantic somehow than cassette tapes which was the format of recorded music I came of age in.

Before that however, when my brother and I were very young and at the mercy of my parents musical tastes, albums were the only for music we saw or heard other than the radio which we turned to for more contemporary sounds. But even though I was recording my favorites from top 40 countdown every weekend, I still liked to sit in my parents room flipping through stacks of vinyl and playing albums on the turn table. I spent hours looking at some very interesting album covers and trying some how to decode their meaning and link that meaning to the music. Very much of that album imagery still haunts my imagination. At the age of about ten or eleven I was trying to understand what the hell Steely Dan was talking about on "AJA" while looking at an album cover that was virtually black, save for a strip of red and white cloth hanging from the neck of what seemed to be an Asian woman submerged in shadow.

I still miss the kind of strange stories artists were able to convey on the large format of album covers in the late 70 and early 80s and recalling them now, I can see pretty clearly where much of my own world view stems from. The album covers that grabbed my attention then helped to shape certain aspects of my approach to creativity now.

There is one thing I do understand about these artists now that I didn't before: They were definitely on some form of mind expanding drug or another. I mean that in a good way.
: )